Baking with lavender!

Hello again!

I finally decided to leave my job and give baking a more serious attempt; and this is my first week as an OMO cake lady. Have been baking quite a bit with lavender the past few days, and am quite excited to experiment more to come up with new cakes in the coming months!

If you have 10 min to spare, do help me with a little cake survey! Our FB cake page is www.facebook.com/nijibakes and the survey link is as follows: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WWLDPMM

Have a great week ahead!
(below: Earl Grey lavender and Chamomile lavender cupcakes)

Strawberry themed cakes!

Work has been hectic, but I haven't been letting it affect my baking! My week is pretty packed with little rest on the weekends as a result; but being to do what I like on the weekends helps me to de-stress a little :) It isn't strawberry season now (all the california strawberries on the market now are all either tasteless or sour), but I have been getting strawberry-themed orders from recent customers, and so I ended up making a strawberry cheesecake and a strawberry marshmallow shortcake. Both customers liked what they got, thankfully, and it made all the effort worthwhile.

Blackberry maple layer cake

Sorry for the long absence in between posts! Work has been quite intense for me the past couple of weeks and I just couldn't find the time to slip in a blog post in between. I've been trying to keep up the baking though, and somehow managed to bake 3 cakes yesterday - 1 experimental and 2 for sale.

The cake experiment was for a spelt flour cake sweetened with pure maple, with light cream and blackberries sandwiched in between the 2 layers. Am still hoping to bake with more wholesome and natural ingredients and this cake is part of my attempt to do so! Sadly the sides turned out a lot browner than the photo in my recipe book; and I'd probably need to try this out a couple of times to get it right. Despite its looks, the cake was delicious (thankfully) and made for a nice little breakfast treat this morning.

Have a good week ahead everyone!

White Matcha Azuki Bar

Success sometimes comes quite accidentally/ coincidentally - speaking from personal experience with making this matcha azuki cake :) And it's when you can really achieve consistency each time that you know you have finally "made it".

I was pretty lucky the first time I put this cake together - the sponge layers were soft and fluffy; and the consistency of the chantilly cream was just right. And I managed to take the above shot that attracted a new high of FB likes.

But when I actually tried to make it again for actual orders, I failed a few times, with issues ranging from a flat/ dense sponge to overbeaten cream. The mistakes were quite painful (imagine having to make things from scratch over again) but it really made me pay attention to every step along the way, so as to get things 'right'. I don't think I am a 100% consistent yet, but at least I know I am somewhere close!

D would know how many meltdowns I have had when trying to bake for sale; and strangely baking has made me more conscious of how high unnecessarily "high-strung" I can get in times of crises! :P I have since learnt to take mess-ups more calmly (still work-in-progress though!) and am really thankful to the home support (sometimes emotional, sometimes physical ie. help with clean-ups) during those times.

And the happy outcome from minor setbacks along the way has been pretty positive feedback from customers who ordered various renditions of this cake! Check out Niji Sweets for some recent photos/ comments! :)

Punggol Cake

I feel a little sheepish about my long absence, but my pace of life has suddenly picked up considerably and it's become tougher to bake regularly - much less blog about my bakes. I suppose things are always tougher at the beginning, and hopefully when I am more settled down in the new job, I can gradually find time to experiment in the kitchen again! So pardon me if my updates become a bit more infrequent - but do check back from time to time!

I just wanted to share a very short update on a "fun" cake I made this week - a chocolate cake in the shape of Punggol Town, covered with caramel swiss meringue buttercream; complete with a mini Punggol Waterway and Coney Island. The little white marshmallows are supposed to represent HDB blocks along the waterway. It was a very unusual order from an architect for an urban planner's birthday. Since I've never made any odd-shaped cake before, was admittedly a little doubtful how it would turn out in the end. Thankfully all turned out well and the customers were pretty happy (not to mention amused)! :)

Learning herb-growing from the experts

It's been a while since I last posted anything about our vegetable plot - mainly because our herbs haven't been doing too well! The lady fingers are going strong and regularly producing fresh lady's fingers, but most of our herbs have died. And so we decided to sign up for NParks' How to Grow Western Herbs workshop last Sat. 

Orange spice ribbon cake

Made an orange spice cake with cream cheese ribbons last Fri - for J's birthday "party" on Saturday. My piping still needs a bit more work; but am pretty thankful that the cake still turned out looking relatively nice in a rustic way. Sadly the cake itself doesn't seem to refrigerate well, and had the tendency to harden overnight in the fridge. Perhaps it had to do with the use of butter in the cake recipe? Will probably need to R&D a bit on making fluffier cake layers before I attempt to make this again for another celebration!

More Mother's Day-related bakes!

Sorry for my semi-absence the past couple of weeks - have been preparing for and going for a few job interviews in between cake R&D attempts and occasional FB posts; and these other preoccupations have been distracting me from penning a new blog entry.

This May has been an unusually busy month for me, cake-wise. I was lucky enough to have received a few cake orders for Mother's Day (which I blogged about in the previous post). Last week also saw me making 2 cakes for family - one for my sister's birthday cum Mother's Day and another for mother-in-law. This coming weekend, a dear friend also entrusted her birthday cake-to-be into my hands...

Bakes for Mother's Day!

My kitchen has been relatively busy since returning from New Zealand - and I baked and sold two Mother's Day cakes the first week of May :)

They were pretty different - one was an elaborately piped and feel-good cream cheese rosette chocolate cake, while the other one was a more rustic and wholesome blueberry lemon almond cake. Both customers seemed to be relatively satisfied with their cakes; and so naturally I was happy too!

Now... what should I bake for my own mum? :)

The Boat Shed Cafe & Bistro, Queenstown

We got back to sunny (and rainy!) Singapore a couple of days back; and am finally getting over the jetlag! So instead of retreating to bed by 10pm like I did the past few nights, I am finally awake enough to blog about a lovely cafe by the shores of Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, New Zealand. A cosy little place called The Boat Shed.

I know it's unlikely many of you would drop by New Zealand anytime soon, but if you happen to visit in the next year or so, do check out this place! We happened to be staying a short distance away from the town centre; and this cafe was just a 2 min walk from our accommodation.

Niji Sweets

As some of you may be aware, I now have a little shop of sorts on Facebook. It's intended as a 'pilot phase' to gauge demand for my bakes and I intend to mainly bake on weekends. It's also a way for me to continue sharing my food photos and to share anything interesting related to baking :)

Here's the link, and if you like what you see, do me a little favour by liking my page!

p/s: Will be off to New Zealand for our 1st anniversary trip; and will be back in late April. Do drop by the blog again in end April - I hope that I will have some new bakes to share with you by then!

Blueberry Lemon Almond Cake

Made entirely with almond flour (ie. ground almonds), fresh lemon juice and blueberries, this was one of the healthy flourless cake recipes I experimented with earlier this year. Occasionally I run through my archive of food photos - and spot a few gems that I somehow neglected to blog about. This was one of them!

The topping is versatile - and if you're going all out to be healthy, plain or Greek yogurt is fine as a glaze, instead of something like cream cheese. Thereafter, top with fresh blueberries! I suppose yogurt isn't particularly conventional as a cake frosting, but hey, this makes a pretty wholesome and delicious breakfast cake to start your day :)

Pistachio Olive Oil Cake

DIY R&D efforts to create healthier bakes are ongoing, and the pistachio olive cake looks like it might fit the bill. While it's hard to dispute that butter is delicious, olive oil generally contains less saturated fats and cholesterol than butter. In addition, pistachios are relatively healthy nuts rich in Vitamin E, and among other benefits seem to be able to help reduce bad cholesterol! A little bit of cream was added (light, fresh whipped cream) to enhance the overall experience of enjoying the cake, but the cream hardly contains any sugar, so on the whole it's still a 'lighter' and slightly healthier treat :)

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Avocado Chocolate Frosting

After close to a week's break from baking, I finally decided to get down to baking again. While I picked up pretty cool skills/tips from my professional baking course, we didn't exactly bake anything very nutritious - and that was one of my main 'gripes' about the course. The nutrition and allergy component was not covered in much detail, and I find myself having to return to online sources/recipe books for information, trends and recipes on baking more healthily/ for special diets.

After my instructor shared her horror stories/ experiences during her hotel pastry chef days, I am also more convinced that most large-scale bakeries don't make anything very fresh, nor are they necessarily very hygienic. And they are likely to have used some kind of chemicals (such as emulsifiers) to bake their sponge cakes in large quantities (which are then frozen). I now have more of an insider view because our teacher made the class make 120 sponges one morning using the huge mixer (to simulate conditions in a real bakery) - and the trade-off was the use of emulsifiers and sponge cake mix to ensure that cakes still turned out nice and soft. 

And because I increasingly believe in eating well and eating right - I find it hard to imagine running something really large-scale, as that would probably mean some kind of compromise on the quality/freshness of my bakes. 

Completion of Professional Baking Course!

These were my "exam bakes" for my professional baking course - a black sesame mousse cake with black sesame chiffon layers; passionfruit meringue chocolate tarts and sundried tomatoes rosemary focaccia. Was really thankful that my cake turned out well (the mousse set nicely and the sides were clean) though it was really my first time making it (I was too tired to do a dry run before the exam; though I semi-tested parts of it, but didn't rehearse putting it together).

As for my tarts - my italian meringue was apparently slightly overwhipped and thus I wasn't able to get nice sharp tips (instead, they turned out a little blobby). It was a pity because when I tried it out at home I got really nice sharp tips! I suppose these things happen. The worst bake of all was my bread - somehow the dough was sticky AND I forgot to add my salt. And naturally when my instructors tasted it, they all felt it could do with a bit more salt (and they immediately understood why it was so bland when I owned up about the salt :P)

But despite the little boo-boos, I passed! But I would really hesitate to call myself a professional now - am still far from it. We basically learnt to make a lot of things - but I'd probably need a lot, a lot more practice to replicate all these baked goods again on my own, at home. Not too surprisingly, baking full time can be very physically demanding; and I doubt I would be able to do it for a 9 - 5 job. Regardless, I'm glad I went for the course as I picked up useful skills and got to know some nice ladies whom I can probably bake with next time!

Will be back shortly!

Pardon me for the silence the past week or so - the baking course has been sucking up most of my time and energy and I haven't managed to get down to updating anything recently. Tomorrow shall be the last day; and I'd be back with more photos from class and other new projects! :)

Professional Baking Course - Week 1

I survived 5 consecutive days of full-day baking - 9 more days to go! And because of all the practice in class, I ended up with 2 chocolate ganache log cakes; 1 apple torte wtih crumble top; 1 claire fontaine orange mousse cake; 2 cartoon sponge cakes and some 18 pieces of sweet buns in various designs. It's pretty tiring to bake everyday, but it's also quite exciting to learn how to make so many different types of cakes/ pastries and breads. If anyone is keen on some free food next week, please let me know! Will be most happy to share or give my baked goods away :) 

Patisserie G

Patisserie G at Millenia Walk is a relatively new kid on the block - and they remind me of Kki in terms of their cake designs, cafe decor and even pricing! With cakes in the range of $8 to $9 per cake, they are definitely targeting higher end consumers. We finally got to try their cakes last Sunday - but unfortunately it was rather disappointing.

The Ombre Cake Birthday Project

 

So I entered a new decade of my life last week - to mark this new "phase" in life I decided to attempt one of my dream cakes - the Ombre Cake! But I only got down to making it the day after - since I wasn't too keen to do a whole lot of washing on my birthday itself ;) 

The ombre cake (I did a coral pink one) is something I have been wanting to make for a long time. These cakes are all the rage in the western world i think - as I see pins of such cakes on Pinterest from time to time and on popular Caucasian food blogs. I can see why - the gradual gradients in the cake sponge somehow just make the cake look that much more romantic. 

I had previously done a ombre rosette cake at my cake decorating class - but that was for the cake decor on the outside, so it didn't quite count. Finally - I have a real ombre cake to be proud of! (though the time I took to bake and put it together isn't really something I'd boast about :P)

Our hydrangeas!

blooming hydrangeas (colour after desaturation)

Special baking sessions

Past bakes include heart-shaped cookies for Valentine's and Almond/oatmeal crisps!

As some of you may already know, I recently started volunteering as a pseudo baking "instructor" with adults who attend the St Andrew's Autism Centre. Every week we attempt simple recipes that can be made under an hour, including wash-up time - but because there aren't that many different things with very basic steps that can be finished in about 30 - 45 min (aside from cookies) I am starting to run out of ideas!

Windowsill Pies@Jalan Besar

Windowsill Pies is located in the still somewhat quiet neighbourhood of Jalan Besar and there were just a handful of customers when we visited on a Sat night last month. But I think crowds of youngsters and yuppies would eventually swarm to this up-and-coming hip enclave (also home to Chye Seng Huat Hardware) and it wouldn't be as nice for hanging out anymore. So if you are a pie lover, my advice is to check this place out soon!

First (failed) attempt at macarons

Once in a while, I feel like I'm up for a baking challenge. It was one of those days when I finally decided to give macarons a try. Moreover, my macaron cheat mat (which comes with little macaron wells to facilitate the piping) from TANGS had been sitting in my kitchen for quite a few months, and would likely sink further into the depths of my baking drawer and fade into oblivion if I didn't start to use it soon!

Macarons are notoriously difficult to make, so I tried to follow my macaron recipe book instructions religiously. It helped that the author provided pretty detailed step-by-step instructions, but didn't help that I still managed to forget certain steps in the end (when I remembered and did it, it was probably a tad too late). 

Chocolate cake for Valentine's!

Happy Valentine's! It's also my mum's birthday today and I baked a small 2-layer 12-cm chocolate cake (topped with mascarpone cheese chocolate frosting) to celebrate the occasion :) It's probably going to turn into quite a mess once we try to cut this (as my frosting turned out a little too runny). But thankfully I've already captured its grandest moment :P

Naturally red velvet cupcakes

Mid-last week, I whipped up a batch of strawberry cupcakes an ex-colleague cum good friend had ordered for Chinese New Year. That she intentionally chose to be my first cupcake customer as moral support for my yet-to-materialise-but-work-in-progress potential cake business touched me immensely :)  Partly because of this, I was suddenly quite motivated to experiment with making other types of cupcakes that people might potentially buy - and the healthier red velvet cake came to mind. 

Peonies for Chinese New Year!

Today I finally got down to arranging the peonies and fillers I got from Star Vista last week. It was love at first sight - with the very natural-looking artificial peonies they had. The real ones are hardly available in Singapore and probably very expensive. And so I excitedly bought a whole bunch of these despite having to transport them home via MRT :) I now have a peony centrepiece for the house to usher in Chinese New Year! :)

A piece of nostalgia

For a change, I decided to create my version of an old-fashioned cake last Wednesday. This idea was seeded after I chanced upon someone's old-fashioned birthday cake post a couple of weeks ago; and my project materialised when I managed to find my nostalgic wafer roses! But unlike Nasi Lemak Lover, I was contented to just decorate two petite pieces of cake for fun and self-amusement.

Black sesame chiffon cake

This black sesame chiffon cake is the poster cake for Keiko Ishida's japanese desserts book Okashi Treats. I've had it for quite a few years now, and have tried making several of her recipes in the past couple of years (which generally turned out well). But perhaps the idea of making and creaming a chiffon cake seemed too challenging before I took a proper cake decorating class, and so I never attempted this till last week!

If you're into Japanese-style cakes, this book is a good buy since it's written in English and gives anyone easy access to Japanese recipes/ recipes with a Japanese twist. I also appreciate the baking tips shared in the book - which should be very useful for most beginners. Japanese/ japanese-influenced cakes really appeal to me, and I've gotten a few books written entirely in Japanese in the past few months. Not too surprisingly though, the present me (when excitedly getting a new Japanese recipe book) repeatedly overestimated the perseverance of the future me in translating each recipe, and so to date I've only attempted a total of ONE recipe from these books..

But I will do better in the coming months! (or so i think... :))

Strawberry Ruffles Cake

I don't know about you, but I am really drawn by the romantic-looking ruffles on these ruffle cakes. It's one of those cakes I pin to my Pinterest board from time to time, hoping that I'd be able to make one some day. It's a huge hassle to do the ruffles though, and so for a while I merely dreamt about it; but never got down to taking any action - till I stumbled upon a good stable swiss meringue buttercream recipe (when making my strawberry cupcakes). 

Strawberry cupcakes

Strawberry is the flavour of the month! I made two more strawberry-themed cakes this week - the first of which are these strawberry cupcakes. The cake is flavoured by freshly pureed strawberries, decorated with strawberry buttercream (incorporating bits of fresh, chopped strawberries) and finally topped with a little slice of strawberry. I was quite excited how pretty they turned out to be; and more importantly, my guinea pig tasters all enjoyed it :) The cake texture is a little on the moist-side though because of the strawberry puree mixed into the cake batter.

Pretty bake tools

These are some lovely baking/kitchenware that have come through my mailbox over Christmas and in the past week. From cupcake cases, tablemats to cookie cutters (that spell my initials), an exquisite seal spoon and even my favourite striped straws! That my friends staying overseas remember and send me little gifts useful for baking or food photography gives me a real warm fuzzy feeling :)

Club Street Social

I wanted to try out another new place for breakfast/ brunch; and after some research, D suggested we visit Club Street Social - located at a quiet corner of Club Street. This was after reading a rave review by Ladyironchef who claimed that this is one of the best (if not the best) brunch places in Singapore. We arrived at the cafe/restaurant slightly after 10am on a Sun morning; and since this place is supposedly quite popular I was pretty surprised we were able to have the whole place to ourselves.

But the feeling of exclusiveness lasted for a mere 10 minutes :P

Strawberry Shortcake

I have a "cakes-to-make" list which changes from time to time, and the strawberry shortcake made it to my list a week or two ago. I got quite excited thinking about it then; and ended up buying a Japanese recipe book with step-by-step instructions on how to make this cake - apparently a default birthday cake and all-time favourite for many Japanese :) I couldn't really find high-fat whipping cream in local supermarkets though; and made do with the typical one I see in NTUC. Thankfully it whipped up relatively nicely (though not that perfect still) and to my surprise, someone placed an order for one the day I uploaded the above photo to FB. 

Our first harvest

I harvested our first kangkong and ladyfinger late last week - it's really amazing how something as basic and simple as soil can nourish my plants to yield these lovely veges. Too bad there weren't enough of them to make a dish, and so I stored both of them in the fridge. To my dismay, the kangkong became shrivelled after a day (as I had naively left it uncovered and exposed to the cold air) and so we had to discard it. Thankfully the ladyfinger was hardier, and we waited for another one to mature before cooking them for dinner on Monday.

Dark chocolate sunken souffle cake

Out of the three chocolate cakes I've made so far (a moist beetroot chocolate cake; the chocolate hazelnut buckwheat one; and most recently the chia seed chocolate mud cake), this probably ranks as my favourite chocolate cake recipe so far! It's extremely rich (made with a substantial portion of >70% cacao chocolate); and can be easily matched with berries/fruits of my choice. I imagined it to look lovely with a mountain of blueberries, and so this is how mine ended up :) I'm sure it will taste and look great too with a mix of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries!

Chye Seng Huat Hardware

For the "uninitiated", Chye Seng Huat hardware looks just like another hardware store in the Lavender/ Jalan Besar area - as the cafe owners decided to retain the shopfront/ look of the premises they took over even after turning it into a cafe. I've been interested to visit after reading about this relatively novel concept a few months back.

D and I had a loose agreement to check out this place, but somehow we never got down to it, and I decided to visit it anyways first when my sis-in-law and I decided to meet for breakfast/ brunch yesterday morning :P

You can get more background about this place and a rave review about Chye Seng Huat from Chubby Hubby (complete with gorgeous photos); or from Ladyironchef if you prefer something brief. I will just write about my little outing there :)